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2 thoughts on “Research: FERPA and Course Assignments”

FERPA says that professors cannot share grades or evaluations of student’s work with others, unless they have permission of the student. Peer feedback, for example on a blog, is not considered part of the educational record. In order to count as educational record, the info has to be maintained by the institution.

I don’t think there is any difference between a class blog that is public or MIDD only. I doubt it would violate FERPA, but I see that some colleges have release forms for students to sign, allowing their class work to be published and distributed for certain educational purposes. Is anyone here at Middlebury using those kind of forms? Some class websites on Segue are visible and include blogs, but there are no evaluations from the prof. Were those students asked to sign a release?

I know of Midd faculty who teach with public blogs and request their students to sign a release forms. I know of faculty who feel it is important to have students submit course assignments in the public domain in order to prepare them for the growing transparency of networked information. I know of faculty who are protective of student work and feel it is unfair to require them to share this outside the class and that its inhibits them from taking risks and experimenting.

A number of students over the years have asked us to remove work they have done for courses that has been indexed by Google.